Madagascar: Conflicts Of Authority In The Great IslandThe world's fourth largest island, with a unique biological and physical endowment, Madagascar is home to an extraordinary insular civilization that has struggled for more than a century against external domination. In this sensitive introduction to the Indian Ocean's "great island," Philip Allen shows how family affinities and community loyalties at the foundation of Madagascar's culture have influenced Malagasy nationalism and forged islandwide traditions. These same principles have nonetheless engendered social cleavages and resistance to economic and political change. In chapters on modern Madagascar, Allen analyzes the inability of a series of regimes to maintain authority among a people deeply bound to rituals of communication with their spiritual environment. He demonstrates how the first Malagasy Republic became stigmatized by its lingering identification with French colonialism and how the nationalist revolution in 1972 soon hardened into autocratic radicalism. Allen explores the complex challenges facing Madagascar's resurgent democratic forces–including a need to conserve the island's irreplaceable biodiversity and to facilitate authentic participation in public affairs without offending ancestral customs and local precedents. Finally, he discusses efforts to end Madagascar's economic and political dependence and to improve living conditions for its tragically impoverished population. |
From inside the book
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... Indian Ocean, Larry W. Bowman Niger: Personal Rule and Survival in the Sahel, Robert B. Charlick Equatorial Guinea: Colonialism, State Terror, and the Search for Stability, Ibrahim K. Sundiata Mali: A Search for Direction, Pascal James ...
... Indian Ocean islanders— the point of the jollity being: So the complicated title of a fussy funny country has been misused. Who cares? The junior officer took the point and learned to use "Malagasy" with considerable respect ...
... OCEAN Madagascar and surrounding region Madagascar in its region . INDIA Maldives Comoro Islands Seychelles INDIAN OCEAN Reunion Mauritius MADAGASCAR 80 Map by Alicia Northcraft.
... Indian Ocean triangle, flanking the long coast of Mozambique. The hourglass channel between them narrows to 400 kilometers between Cap St. André and Moçambique Island, billowing wide to 1,000 kilometers at its northern and southern ...
... India to the east, leaving no room for Madagascar.4 The island may have been first identified by Arabs, who called ... Indian Ocean trade winds into a rain forest that receives from 1,500 to more than 3,500 millimeters of precipitation ...
Contents
From Paternalism to Revolution | |
Revolution as Myth | |
Society in Modern Madagascar | |
Flight from Reality | |
Continuity as Revolution | |
Revolution and Continuity in International Relations | |
Notes | |
Selected Bibliography | |
Index | |